Closed Curtain

One has to feel for Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. The internationally acclaimed director of "The White Balloon" and "The Circle" was arrested in 2010 and was given a 20-year ban from filmmaking - which, given that he was 50 at the time, would rob him of some of his key creatively productive years.

While he is free pending appeal on his six-year jail sentence, Panahi has taken a big risk making two "non-films" (the first, a wonderful cinematic essay, was gleefully titled "This Is Not a Film").

"Closed Curtain" is the second "non-film," this one co-directed by star Kambuzia Partovi, and you can sense his growing frustration. Shot entirely in Panahi's house, it is a more mellow, almost resigned meditation on creativity, loss of freedom and spiritual strait-jacketing.

This is one of those layered, fairly plotless and enigmatic films that comes into sharper focus as it goes along - thus to describe it would by definition require spoilers. So I'll give you the set-up: A writer (Partovi) is working on a project. He's keeping his dog hidden inside because the government has just declared dogs illegal because they are "not Islamic."

Suddenly, a young couple arrives in the evening rain. The woman is beautiful but suicidal (or said to be); the man turns out to be her brother and goes for help, leaving the woman with the writer. She constantly badgers and distracts the writer while he is trying to work.

The rest I will not reveal, but the usual questions - Who is this woman? Why is she in trouble? - turn to: Is she even real or a figment of the writer's imagination?

When not under government persecution, Panahi's talents as a special filmmaker are in full flower. Here's hoping he gets sprung soon.